Vegan ice cream and pizza at de Parade

De Parade is a travelling theatre festival that takes place in four Dutch cities throughout the summer. I like this festival not just for the performances but also for the wide variety of freshly prepared food sold at stalls all over the park. All the little restaurants represent a range of different cuisines, and while I haven’t asked about vegan options at every stall, I’ve never had trouble finding tasty eats and drinks.

This year I was excited to learn that the ice cream shop at the festival would be selling vegan ice cream by Professor Grunschnabel, a brand of coconut milk-based desserts I’d been meaning to try for a while. Their products include intriguing flavours such as Fresas del Habanero (strawberry with hot chillies), Indian Winter (coconut, ginger and Indian spices), and SalmiaCoco (coconut with vanilla and liquorice). The ice cream stall does sell dairy-based ice creams as well, and the coconut-based ones aren’t marked as vegan, but they’re pretty easy to recognise by their names and ingredients. The people at the stall may stare at you if you mention the name Grunschnabel (haha!) but they can probably tell you which ones are made with coconut milk. We happened to be there on a pretty chilly day, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sample some vegan ice cream!

I ordered a scoop of berry ice cream (can’t remember the name!) and the chocolate coconut flavour (ChoCocolate). I liked both, but the chocolate flavour was definitely my favourite. For some reason I thought I wasn’t a big fan of coconut milk in ice cream, but this combination worked really well (of course it did! it’s chocolate and coconut!), so I definitely want to try making coconut-based ice cream again very soon. Yum.

For dinner, we went over to Fuoco e Desiderio for some freshly baked pizza. Here’s a photo of their pizza ovens that I took a few years ago at de Parade in Utrecht:

I asked for a cheeseless pizza so they made me one with artichoke hearts, peppers, and rocket. I think there was some chilli oil on there, too, because it was nice and spicy! It was a light, fresh meal – perfect for summer, and doesn’t it make you wish you had one of those beautiful ovens in your garden? (I guess I’d have to have a garden first…)

I also had a gorgeously pink apple and beetroot juice at a tiny juice bar called Little Sister. Pretty!

If you’d still like to visit De Parade this year, the festival is currently in Utrecht and it’ll be in Amsterdam next month.

Potato & Tempeh Sausage Pizza

I was really looking forward to sharing the pizza I made today, but sadly the picture turned out pretty horrible. This was tasty, though. It’s the Potato and Tempeh Sausage Pizza from Vegan with a Vengeance and it’s awesome! I love the tempeh sausage crumbles on pizza and I have a lot of leftovers so I’ll definitely be doing that again. The potato didn’t cook as much as I would’ve liked it to, though, so next time I might try steaming the slices first. I’d love to get crispy and/or creamy potato on my pizza, but these slices were still a little crunchy and undercooked. Other than that, this was really yummy.

Sorry for the low-quality post, I promise to try better soon! :) Meanwhile, read other (awesomer!) MoFo posts here! I have to get up early so I’d better try and get some sleep now.

Salad & Pizza in the Garden

I think I already mentioned on here that we had a pretty crappy summer with loads of rain and not nearly enough sunshine. Needless to say, it was a welcome surprise that the first days of autumn actually turned out to be very pleasant; yesterday my boyfriend and I even spent the afternoon at the beach (No swimming, though; too many jellyfish :( I did bring a cookbook to do some MoFo planning and it turns out my boyfriend would like me to try out all pancake and waffle recipes from 500 Vegan Recipes this month. Not a bad idea…) Today was equally gorgeous, so my parents and I decided to have dinner outside in the garden. I made the pizza dough from Nonna’s Italian Kitchen and the tofu ricotta from Veganomicon, so all we needed were a few fresh veggies to make a yummy summery meal.

My pizza had fresh tomato slices, tofu ricotta, sautéed oyster mushrooms, marinated artichokes (I found these at Xenos and they’re so much better than the canned artichoke hearts I usually get!), sliced red onion and arugula. I know I’ve said it before, but this pizza dough is the best! It’s easy to work with and makes for a delicious chewy/crispy crust. I haven’t always had good results with whole wheat pizza crusts, but I always use a cup of whole wheat flour in this recipe and it works beautifully! I actually prefer the crunchy texture it give the crust. Now all we need is a pizza stone and I’ll never want restaurant pizzas again!

We’d made salads while waiting for the pizzas to arrive, and they were almost as delicious as the pizzas themselves. My plate had mixed lettuce, fresh tomato, red onion, tofu ricotta, some of those delicious artichoke hearts, and the Classic French Vinaigrette from the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. The dressing was quick to whip up and made a tasty addition to our salads. We also drizzled a little onto our pizzas.

I hope to  be back with more summery eats tomorrow. Got to enjoy those sunny days while they last!